


you are listening to Los Angeles

by Mireille



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Community: gilesxander, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-30
Updated: 2007-10-30
Packaged: 2019-03-18 04:24:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13674222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: Except at five a.m., Giles is just the number on the speed-dial that he can't erase, but won't ever call.





	you are listening to Los Angeles

Xander wakes up early most mornings. He doesn't get out of bed, just lies there and listens to the barely-audible sounds of the morning DJ on his staticky clock-radio. With the blinds pulled down, he can only see a crack of early dawn light coming through at the bottom. There's nothing about it that says "L.A." For an hour, he could be anywhere.  
  
For an hour, he's back in Bath, in their--in Giles' bedroom. For an hour, he lets the radio block out the sounds of traffic, tells himself he can hear rain falling on the roof, imagines that the other side of the bed is only empty because Giles is in the kitchen, reading his newspaper and drinking tea. He'll be back in a little while, coaxing Xander out of bed with kisses. Xander could sleep later if he wanted; he doesn't have to be at work until an hour after Giles does. He always gets up, though. He likes it that they go into work together. He likes all the stupid couple-y things they do.   
  
For an hour every morning, they still do those things.   
  
Then his back-up alarm goes off, and Xander gets out of bed, his own bed, in his own apartment, in Los Angeles.   
  
England's just a country he hasn't seen in six months; he doesn't even know where he put his passport. And except at five a.m., Giles is just the number on the speed-dial that he can't erase, but won't ever call.   
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
The problem was--  
  
Well, that was it, wasn't it? He didn't actually know what the problem had been.   
  
From his perspective, the problem was that he'd come home one night and found Xander's clothes gone from the closet, Xander's toothbrush missing from the bathroom, a note on the kitchen table that had just said,  _I'm sorry._  From Xander's perspective, though, he had no idea what had gone wrong.   
  
All Buffy and Willow would tell him was that Xander was okay--not where he was, not why he'd gone, not anything but that Xander was safe and Giles didn't need to worry about it. All Giles knew was that for some reason, Xander had felt the need to run away.   
  
It wasn't enough of an answer. 

* * *

  
  
  
  
All things considered, Xander thought, he was doing okay.   
  
He had a job--not a great job, but a job. Enough to pay the rent. He had an apartment--well, him and two other people, but L.A. rent wasn't cheap. Mandy worked nights, so he barely saw her, and Jeff was an okay guy whose main housemately sin was forgetting to hang up his towels. He cooked, though, so Xander could forgive that one.   
  
Besides, Xander had had a roommate who drank blood; wet towels on the floor were--actually, Spike had done that, too. Jeff was definitely a improvement.   
  
He was even going out sometimes. With friends, mostly, but there was a girl he'd met at the supermarket, and then a guy from the gym he'd joined because he might not be world-saving any more, but he wanted to keep in prime running-away form. Neither thing had gone anywhere, but at least it proved he was trying.   
  
Getting over it. Moving on.   
  
That was what he told the girls every week when he called them--Willow on Tuesdays after work, Buffy Sunday mornings. He was fine, and no, he didn't want them to tell Giles where he was, and no, he didn't want to talk about why he'd left, and  _yes_ , telling him how miserable Giles sounded was still grounds for being hung up on.   
  
He was moving on. He didn't need to dwell on past mistakes.   
  
So when Buffy suggested New Year's in Rome, and promised that it'd just be the two of them, Dawn, and Willow, he decided it was time to stop hiding from his friends.   
  
He'd moved on, and so even if they mentioned Giles from time to time, he was going to be okay.

* * *

  
  
  
  
  
No one had remarked on his lack of enthusiasm.  
  
Buffy, who hadn't overcome her tendency to overdo the holidays, becoming steadily more frantic until someone cried, stormed out of the room, or threw something--it was generally Dawn, and this year she'd done all three--hadn't seemed to notice that Giles had remained apart from the general chaos.  
  
When he'd told Willow that she should write up a report on some of the research she'd been doing and send it to the Council, rather than talking to her about it as he usually did, she'd shrugged, said, "Okay," and gone over to help Buffy with dinner.  
  
It was Dawn who cracked first, over a strained and silent dinner, and blurted out what Giles had already suspected: Xander would be arriving tomorrow. This whole visit was the girls' scheme to try to repair whatever had gone wrong between them.  
  
He was touched, he supposed, even if there was a large part of him that wanted to get his suitcase and walk out--once he'd given them his opinion on their attempts at meddling in his personal life.  
  
The rest of him, though, kept him there. It had been six months since he'd seen Xander, six months that he'd been waiting for an answer, and perhaps it was time he got one.

* * *

  
  
  
  
According to Dawn's alarm clock, he and Giles had been locked in here for forty-five minutes now.   
  
Actually locked in, not anything metaphorical. Locked, with a key and a padlock, because apparently, Buffy had  _planned_  this. Xander was pretty sure he wasn't going to be forgetting that little detail any time soon.   
  
Forty-four of those minutes had been spent in total silence; Giles had tried to start a conversation, and Xander had told him to shut up, and that had been that. Xander didn't want to talk to him. He didn't even want to look at Giles, especially not when he noticed that Giles's face was thinner, the circles under his eyes darker, than the last time Xander had seen him.   
  
It was work, Xander told himself. It couldn't be anything else. He knew Giles wouldn't have missed him for long.   
  
Forty-eight minutes now, and Xander had had enough. "All right, this isn't funny any more," he yelled. "Let us out."   
  
"Have you two made up?" Dawn called.   
  
"We're not  _fighting_ ," he argued, because they weren't. Fighting involved talking, and they weren't doing that.   
  
"Then tough."   
  
All right. The apartment was only on the third floor. Xander could make a rope out of bedsheets, and--and they'd stripped the bed. They'd actually  _stripped the bed_  to keep him here.   
  
And suddenly, the whole situation just seemed too ridiculous for words; he sat back down on the edge of the bed, burying his face in his hands and laughing helplessly. He was being held prisoner by his best friends until he made up with his ex-boyfriend.  _No one else_  had a life like this.   
  
He looked up to see that Giles was smiling as well--the expression looking stiff and awkward, like he'd lost the habit, and Xander wondered if that, like how tired Giles looked, was his fault. If Giles had been missing him as much as he'd been missing Giles, after all.   
  
This time, when Giles said, "I think we should talk about this," Xander sighed and flopped onto the bed.   
  
"Yeah," he said softly. "Maybe we should." 

* * *

  
  
  
  
He'd made himself listen in silence while Xander explained everything: the night one of his old classmates, one of the few who'd survived the First, had come to dinner, and Xander had had to listen to shared reminiscences and discussions of obscure codices and grimoires; the casual comment he'd made as they were getting ready for bed, something to the effect that he'd enjoyed being able to talk to someone who was as passionate about old mystical texts as he was.   
  
Xander hadn't had to explain how his insecurity had turned that into a certainty that Giles was going to get tired of him, would decide that Xander was too young and uneducated and American for this to last. And--although he did, repeatedly--he hadn't had to tell Giles how sorry he was, either; it was there in the tone of his voice and the defeated slump of his shoulders.   
  
He could have tried to punish Xander for what he'd done, could have tried to inflict some of the hurt he'd been feeling for the past six months. Instead, he listened, until Xander said, "So what do we do now?"  
  
"I was hoping," Giles said, "that you'd consider coming home."   
  
Xander nodded. "I have to go back to LA," he said. "Get my stuff, quit my job, straighten things out with my roommates. But that'll only take a couple of weeks. If you're sure--I mean,  _I_  wouldn't want me back."  
  
"I think," Giles told him, "we've both seen that you're not that good at guessing what it is that I want."   
  
Xander smiled, just for a second, and Giles decided that six months was long enough to wait to have Xander in his arms.   
  
From the way Xander clutched at him, holding him so tightly that Giles could barely breathe, he thought that Xander had had enough of waiting, too. 

**Author's Note:**

> [me on tumblr](https://mireille719.tumblr.com)


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